People said it to her all her life, “You’re pretty, for a black girl.”

Their words hurt her, cut into her soul, made her question her self-worth. Tamecia could have bowed her head and let her anger consume her. Instead, she walked in a different world. She used her art to educate and inform, to tell other women they were not alone. Her art explored beauty and feminism and exposed how the definition frustrated and hurt women. She recognized the scars while refusing to allow them to define her. She worked to remove the lines that never should have existed.

Kurt stood at the edge of the pit glaring at the idle excavator. He had just arrived when his radio crackled, reporting an injury on site. Kurt rushed to the pit to see Pete slumped over the tractors of the excavator. The emergency crew whisked him to the hospital leaving Kurt to complete the paperwork and arrange for a replacement operator.

He lifted his hard hat and ran his hand through his hair. Concern for Pete competed with frustration in another delay. They were behind schedule. Kurt glanced at the office clock, time slipped away. He relied on Pete, counted on his expertise to get them back on schedule.

The radio crackled, the voice informed him the replacement operator had arrived. In an hour, the excavator growled and sputtered and the bucket took a bite of dirt. Kurt headed back to his truck.

Alone he dialed the number of the hospital. He spoke with a nurse who connected him with Pete’s doctor. Dr. Barton said Pete was dehydrated, but responding well to treatment. They predicted Pete would be fine by tomorrow. Relief flooded through him, Pete, his baby brother was okay. Kurt knew he couldn’t run the business without him.

It was an institution in a neighborhood of institutions. Starting with a pushcart in the last 1800’s Frank sold lunch baskets to the workers. Later, he found the best corner and set up a more permanent building. Little more than a shack, it served its purpose. Frankie Jr. took over the business in the 1920’s and upgraded the shack to a metal dining car. The third shift diners slowly gave way to the after-hours bar crowd, allowing the diner to stay open twenty-four hours a day for over one hundred years. Frank’s customers were more than loyal, they were family.

This week’s photo prompt is provided by loniangraphics. Thank you for our photo prompt!

It has been foggy and cold here for several days. The fog lingers on the horizon until the sun rises, warming the air and putting the fog to bed. This morning I woke to a rare surprise. The conditions were perfect, and the signs were promising, so I waited and hoped it would happen. Hoarfrost covered the earth. It transformed the world, covering everything in frost crystal structures that formed on any sub-freezing blade of grass, leaf, branch, fence post or sign. The hoarfrost formed from the moisture in the air, the vapor instantaneously metamorphosing into intricate interlocking patterns.

I dressed, pulled on my wool coat, and my heavy boots before grabbing my camera and headed into wonderland. The silence was deafening. My boots crunched through the snow and echoed for miles. The sun was a fuzzy orb that stained the sky a soft pink that contrasted with the shimmering green of the encrusted pines. I snapped photos preserving the moments until the delicate frost disintegrated in the warming air.

People judged her. She didn’t remember a time when they saw her and not her disfigurement. As a child, she could not escape the condemnation in their eyes. Her family thought they were protecting her when they hid her away. The doctors, convinced they could fix her, made her suffer through surgery after surgery. She hoped and prayed they would make her look like the photos in the magazines. Each time they failed and each time she grew stronger and came to accept who she was. Instead, she celebrated her differences, put them on display. She would never hide again.

The clock ticked in Sakura’s office. It echoed down the hall and through the empty stacks. She loved the library. As a little girl, she fell in love with the books and she never wanted to leave. It was why she had become a librarian. She knew every inch, all the library’s secrets, and she wanted to share them with everyone. Each year she helped the students with Mr. Ayer’s final writing assignment. Sakura found joy in locating the perfect book for each reader. Everything had changed, everything and everyone except Sakura. She kept current with technology so she could continue to help her patrons, but it wasn’t enough. The books remained, but the library was empty. It broke Sakura’s heart. The people had forgotten the joy in her library.

People from the town and from years ago and miles away attended her funeral. They each told a special story about Sakura. Their beloved librarian, who taught them so much had slipped away, they would not lose her library too. They buried her ashes in the courtyard under the window of her office. They planted a cherry tree to mark the spot and to remind them of the real treasure.

They met after dark every Friday night at the abandoned warehouse. The road running past it was straight as an arrow, farmland to the north and a swampy creek on the south. The warehouse was too far from town. Even the cops didn’t come. It was only the crew.

It was like most other nights, except tonight the fog rose from the swamp and rolled across the road, threatening to engulf the lot. The first cars arrived. Jimmy slipped past the chained door that hung on bent hinges. Inside he flipped a switch and lights bathed the lot in an eerie glow. Everyone knew the drill, and they filled the slots.

Heads tuned when a late comer rolled in, fog oozing after him, boiling up and over the car as he slid from behind the wheel. The hooded stranger leaned against his bumper not uttering a word.

“Wanna race?” someone from the crew called.

The stranger nodded. They lined up, engines revved, Ginny dropped the flag. Tires squealed, and they vanished into the fog racing for the finish line. Eyes straining into the dark, a brilliant flash blinded them before the concussion of the crash knocked them to the ground.

Marcus scooted another wooden crate out from under the workbench. He stood hefting the box to the top of the workbench’s well-worn surface and sorted its contents into three piles. The first and smallest pile held the handful of tools good enough for him to use as they were. A second, slightly larger pile contained tools he thought he could salvage. The third and largest pile was a mound of tools too rusted, pitted or broken from lack of care and improper storage to be of use to anyone.

He sighed as he surveyed the carnage. His never knew his grandfather, and it saddened Marcus. Grandpa had been a skilled and talented woodworker, his pieces scattered among the family. Why didn’t Grandma share this locked section of the basement with him? She had never shown him his workspace, not even when Marcus opened his own shop. Standing in the dank basement surrounded by his tools, Marcus met his grandfather. He didn’t understand why she would lock them away, letting them disintegrate in layers of rust and dust in a musty dungeon.

If he had known about his grandfather’s tools sooner, he might have saved them. It was such a waste.